Power and Bulk

Look, I'm not going to lie. There's a guy in here, "Lockout", that makes this one of the least productive and most boring places to talk training on the internet, and no one can be bothered to ban him. Buyer beware. Arguments about minutiae. Ad hominems. Appeals to authority. Training #1.

I remember years ago on the marunde-muscle forum someone asked the question how much Jesse benched. Jesse's reply was that he didn't even bench so he didn't know, but if he had to guess, he thought he could probably do about 700 lbs. He said he mostly focused on overhead work, and any benching type movements like inclines or dips were only assistance.

I also remember once years ago I focused only on military press for a while, no benching. Then when I went back to benching and tried, I set a PR.

So yeah, military press is a rather descent lift. I like it.

But the strange thing I noticed is that I don't get sore at all from military press, but I do get really sore from bench press and other similar movements. Yet it still seems to help the bench press if I work at it.

I remember not getting sore in the shoulders from overhead presses. Turns out I was sore in the lower tarps which can be hard to notice. That was interesting. Perhaps you should check if it is the same in your case. It got better with practice and patience.

Jesse Marunde was a great overhead presser. I doubt he could bench 700lbs (raw) but then, that list is very short.

My strict OHP has always been around 2/3 of my bench, give or take a couple %. My best bench was 345x5, press was 220x5. Now its more like 295x5 and 195x5. There were a few regulars on this board who hit 300, way out of my league.

I think Marunde was more like a 450 bencher. Not really built to bemch or squat and more known for his athleticism than brute strength.

But I can think of some guys stronger than that in certain lifts. How about Vasily Alexeyev with his 507 lb press? And what about squats? Jesse had a video of him doing 407x20. But Tom Platz could do a heck of a lot more than that and in stricter form.

There are some very strong guys out there. But for strongman you've got to have everything. The biggest and strongest guys tend to easily do well in strongman. But I noticed that guys with the best all around athleticism with both strength and endurance, they can pickup strongman very quickly and excel at it immediately without prior event training. At least that's what I noticed.

You can be a strong man. But without endurance, you aren't going to last the events. Plus even if you aren't as strong as the next guy, you can make up for it in other ways such as technique.

I think the better WSM guys are taller than said PL'ers. Marunde was 6' 4" They have an advantage in some ways, like pulling and carrying, stone lifts to a certain height etc. Pressing, especially BP's, are good for shorter limb guys.

Snake Plisken wrote:I think the better WSM guys are taller than said PL'ers. Marunde was 6' 4" They have an advantage in some ways, like pulling and carrying, stone lifts to a certain height etc. Pressing, especially BP's, are good for shorter limb guys.